The One with the Swords
by cattyk8
Summary: Lynn Echolls died when Logan was sixteen. Why, then, is she the first person he sees when he wakes up after the explosion? And why the heck does she have a sword? S4 fix-it fic. Part of "The Ones Where Logan Lives" series originally posted on AO3.


**The One with the Swords**  
by cattyk8

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**SUMMARY**

Lynn Echolls died when Logan was sixteen. Why, then, is she the first person he sees when he wakes up after the explosion? And why the heck does she have a sword? S4 fix-it fic. Part of "The Ones Where Logan Lives" series originally posted on AO3.

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_**IMPORTANT NOTES:**_

_In case you're not familiar with _Highlander_, the movie or the series, we've got some helpful terms to get you started._

_Immortal: People who are immune to disease and aging after they become Immortal (after their first death); they live forever unless beheaded._

_The Quickening: The release of energy from an Immortal upon his/her beheading. On the show it appears as a lighting/electrical storm, and the power and knowledge from the beheaded Immortal is absorbed by the nearest Immortal also present at the time—most likely the one who beheaded them._

_The Buzz: A prickling at the nape of the neck and a surge of adrenaline that an Immortal feels when another Immortal is near. Range and intensity of the feeling depends on the age and power of the Immortals._

_The Game: The battle between Immortals who fight and behead each other until only one remains._

_TRIGGER WARNING: Logan does die in this one, if only for a short while. In an explosion. So warnings for description of severe bodily injury and major (if temporary) character death._

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The Immortal sitting inside a carefully nondescript sedan watches the scene across the street, manicured fingernails digging into her palms in tension. The boy—he's been a man for years now, but she can't help thinking of him as a boy, given her long history—chats with his new wife as he walks toward the car. It is his wedding day, and she has just watched him exchange vows with the little blonde who'd held his fascination since they'd been children. The Immortal isn't sure if the blonde is worthy of the boy's devotion, but that could just be a mother's overprotectiveness speaking.

Because once upon a time, the Immortal had graced the big and small screen as well as the covers of tabloids as the talented yet troubled Lynn Echolls. Or at least she had, until she'd felt the buzz of an ancient Immortal while sitting outside the principal's office at her son's high school.

She'd run; she'd never been much of a fighter. Other Immortals might behead each other for the sake of the Quickening, a transfer of power and knowledge to the nearest Immortal after another lost his or her head. But Lynn had always abhorred violence and avoided it as much as possible. Especially when it was directed at herself. And a part of her worried at what would happen with Logan, who wasn't even Immortal yet, if another got close enough to see what he would become.

She might be a coward, but she was at least a survivor, and she'd been a mother for sixteen years. The choice to run and hide hadn't been the easiest decision, but it had been the only one she could make, in order to keep both herself and her son safe.

Even now, years later, her sword was practically unblooded, compared to other Immortals she'd come across. In nearly a century of existence, she'd only ever had two Quickenings to her name, and one of those had been for a Nazi officer who'd already been incapacitated after he'd stepped on a mine outside a little town in Austria. She'd beheaded him with the sense that she'd done the world a favor. Her other kill had been another Immortal nearly as green as she'd been.

So, as she'd listened to her husband threaten her and her son defend her, she'd felt the prickling sensation at the base of her neck, and then adrenaline had coursed through her, stronger than any she'd felt before. And it had grown steadily stronger, indicating the other Immortal had sensed her too and was heading her way.

She'd bolted. If the other Immortal hadn't followed her, she would have returned home and feigned some sort of mental breakdown or tantrum.

But he had followed her, and with such dogged persistence that she knew he must be after her head. She was a relative infant, to other Immortals, but there were those who didn't care about things like that, who only wanted to rid the world of others like themselves in a bid for power. She'd left Neptune to escape the unknown Immortal all those years ago, and she hadn't dared return for fear for her life.

Eventually realizing she would never get away from him on foot or in a car headed into San Diego's traffic, she had stopped on the Coronado Bridge, climbed out and plunged. She'd died as she hit the water, then revived as the current pulled her out into the Pacific.

She'd stripped off the clothes threatening to pull her down and tried to swim to safety, but she'd tired and drowned a few more times before awakening as she was pulled up into a fisherman's boat off the coast of Mexico. The fisherman had thought her a mermaid and would have done anything she'd asked; he'd given her a spare set of clothes and left her on a beach by her request.

From there, she'd gone into hiding, although she'd made periodic trips to California to spy on her son, the boy she'd adopted as a newborn, a latent Immortal who'd been abandoned on the steps of a church in Italy, where she'd been traveling. A combination of bribes to a clinic and DNA testing facility and her own skills at acting had allowed her to persuade Aaron the baby was theirs; he'd been hinting at wanting a son, and she'd fallen for the babe the moment he'd been placed in her arms.

She'd kept her distance from him for nearly two decades, even though she'd hired people to watch him from afar. She'd been concerned when she'd learned he'd overdosed on drugs, and she'd been all set to whisk him away when a professor from the college he'd dropped out of had offered him a new lease on life.

And Logan had joined the Navy and become an aviator.

The woman who'd once been known as Lynn remembers telling her son about her own father, who'd been a pilot in the first World War. Of course, she'd changed her story, saying the boy's grandfather had served in the Korean War, but the boy had so enjoyed those tales of heroism, and she'd found herself sharing more and more of them at his request.

The boy had grown up to serve his country himself. Was still doing so, as a naval intelligence officer—she wonders if that's just a fancy word for spy. She's known a few spies in her day, having served as an informant during World War II (which had resulted in the aforementioned quickening courtesy of an injured Nazi).

She wonders when the boy's first death will be, if his being married now will complicate things.

And then it happens.

The world turns white, and her car rocks from the impact of the explosion. Her ears are still ringing when she opens her eyes to see her boy lying still on the road.

She knows she doesn't have much time, so she pulls her car out of the spot where she's parked it, across the street from his house. She stops right beside where he's lying. She gets out, feels for a pulse. There is none, and parts of him are burned badly enough that she doesn't expect one.

Later, later, she'll have nightmares about the war, about corpses burned just as badly as his.

For now, she struggles to get his body into her car, heaving him onto the back seat, and then she gets back into the driver's seat and drives to the marina, where she keeps a boat. She has friends in Paris who have shown her just how useful it can be to have a home on the water.

She's just parked the car when she feels the buzz. A moment later, the corpse in her back seat takes a breath. She looks back to see her son whole and unburnt, but completely bewildered.

"M-mom?"

She smiles. "Hi, darling."

He blinks. And blinks again. Sits up. "So, um, are you alive, or am I dead?"

She grimaces at that. "A little of both, I'm afraid."

He frowns, and then his expression turns frantic. "Veronica!" He reaches for the door, but she'd engaged the child locks when she'd stolen his corpse from the scene of the explosion, and it does no good.

"She's fine," she soothes him. "But we need to talk, before you go back to her. If you go back to her."

He scowls. "Why wouldn't I go back to her?"

"Maybe because she was talking to you just moments before you died in an explosion? And most people tend to stay dead from things like that."

"An explosion?"

"Your car exploded," she tells him. "You were right beside it. You died."

"So I'm dead?"

"You were. Now? Not so much."

"Mom, you're not making any sense."

Then she feels the buzz once more. And by the way he rubs his nape and shudders, she knows he feels it too. She grabs her sword from where it's lying against the front seat, unsheathes it. She's not much of a fighter, but for this boy? For _her _boy? She'd take on the Four Horsemen themselves. "Come with me now, Logan."

"Mom?" He's goggling at her blade. "Is that a freaking sword?"

"Yes," she says, and can't help adding, "Technically, it's a saber."

"What the hell are you doing with a _sword _?"

"Keeping us alive. I've got one for you too."

"Wh—"

"We don't have time for explanations, Logan. That prickling feeling at the base of your neck means there's someone nearby who may want to cut both our heads off. We need to get away."

He frowns. "I can't leave Veronica."

"If you lead them to Veronica, you could put her in danger too." She sees his expression turn steely, realizes this is the button she needs to push to get him to cooperate. "For now, getting away means keeping her safe. Follow me."

She gets out of the car, lets him out of the back seat, and takes his hand while keeping her sword out. She leads him to her boat, where they quickly untie the moorings and head out onto open water. They don't drop anchor until nightfall.

Once they do, he turns to her. "Two things," he says, holding up the same number of fingers. "One, are we safe now?"

"Yes," she says. "We would both know if he was near." He gives her a strange look at that. She shrugs. "The prickling at the back of your neck? That feeling like a slight hangover? That's how you know someone like us comes near."

"I'll want to know more later. Two, is Dad—is Aaron alive and walking around too?"

Her face darkens at that. "No, baby. He's dead, and good riddance."

He nods slightly. "On that we can agree."

"I'm sorry for leaving you with him, but someone was after me, and I was afraid, especially as I knew he would be able to sense you too. I meant to come back, but he seems to have settled in the area, and you never seemed to want to leave, except when you were with the Navy."

"I'm still with the Navy, Mom."

She shrugs. "You might not be, if you're legally dead."

"About that. Explain how I'm alive, if I was blown up."

And so she does. She tells him about Immortals, about how he'll revive from any death save decapitation. About the buzz and what it means when another Immortal is near. She offers him a sword, one she's been carrying with her for a long time. She'd commissioned it for him from a master craftsman years ago, before the bridge, from the days she was sure he'd be delivered to his first death by Aaron Echolls.

He unsheathes it, sees the way she's had his initials engraved into the hilt. He stares at the blade dazedly. "How do you know another Immortal is going to want to kill us?" he asks.

"I don't," she says. "And I'll even introduce you to a few of the friendly ones. But on the whole, it's better to be safe than sorry, especially until you learn to fight with a sword."

He frowns. "About that. This." He swings the blade carelessly, making her grimace at the lack of technique. "A sword, Mom? Really?"

She shakes her head. "You don't understand The Game, but like it or not, you're already in it."

"The Game? Mom, what are you talking about?"

"I'm not the best at explaining it," she says, sighing. "And I'm not good enough at the sword to mentor you. I've got a friend I can bring in who can do that, and he owes me a favor or two, so I'm pretty sure he'll be willing to do it. But it'll take him a while to fly in from Paris. Or he'll ask that you go there to meet him."

He pulls at his hair, short as it is. She thinks fondly of the frosted tips he sported all those years ago. "Mom, I'm not going to fly to Paris to learn _sword fighting _."

"Logan, you have to, or you'll _die _."

"According to you, I've already died."

She shakes her head. "That was just your first death. I mean, if you don't learn to defend yourself, the next Immortal you come across might just take your head."

"Why? Can you tell me that much?" He's scowling at her. "Why do you think some random Immortal who's probably never even met me will want to kill me on sight?"

"Because—" She grimaces.

"Because what?"

"Because in the end, there can be only one."

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_**END NOTES:**_

_An Easter egg for people familiar with both fandoms: the bit about the friend in Paris who lives on a boat references Duncan MacLeod from _Highlander: The Series_, which I watched religiously as a kid._

_This fic originally appeared as part of "The Ones Where Logan Lives," posted on Archive of Our Own. The premise for the collection: Eight authors. Thirty-__six__ fanfics. One fic posted every day, starting in November, all with the same mission: save Logan Echolls._

_Cover art by the amazing jmazzy, who also runs allthevmff on Twitter. Thank you to Irma66 and CubbieGirl1723 for the beta read and also for information on S4, which I haven't actually seen (and may never, if what I've been spoiled about is only the tip of the iceberg)._

_A playlist for the collection can be found on Spotify — the song for this fic is Queen's "Princes of the Universe," which served as the theme song for the Highlander movies and TV series._

_As it happens, I have a few fics posted as part of the collection apart from this one: "The One Where Logan Goes to TAHITI" is a crossover with _Marvel's Agents of SHIELD_ and the Avengers movies, and "The One Where Logan Loses His Clothes" is a fusion with the 2014 TV series Forever. Please do check them out here or on AO3 if and when you have the time, as well as the other amazing stories in the collection, which were written by people who actually know what they're doing!  
_


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